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Saturday, October 1, 2011

Fast, Simple, YouTube Downloads Directly to Your iPad with TagDiskHD+

I know, I know...YouTube is blocked in your school and you'd love to download videos directly to your iPad to play them for your students through your LCD projector.

But until now your only options have been to use a clumsy Dropbox upload method, experiment with Roadshow's limited Vimeo-only capacity, or pull TED talks down directly through the iPad's dedicated TED app.

Frustrating. You want your YouTube vids, right?

Well, enter TagDiskHD+, the only iPad app that lets you quickly save YouTube videos directly to your iPad with no iTunes sync - and without the resolution limits of a Keepvid upload to Dropbox.

Experiment with the free lite version. But once you see how easy it is, you'll want to spring for the $4.99 paid app for unlimited downloads.

What I love about this app is its simplicity.
  1. Change the URL in the top browser from http://www.next4phone.com to m.youtube.com.
  2. Open the separate YouTube browser below it and search for a favourite video.
  3. Select the video, but don't hit play.
  4. Click the download arrow to the left of the top browser field.
  5. Hit OK when the "Enter URL to download" box pops up.
Your video will begin downloading very quickly. To finish:
  1. Click the "downloads" button at the bottom of the screen to check the progress of your download. 
  2. Once the download's done, click the "disk" button at the bottom. 
  3. Your video is now sitting pretty in the "documents" folder.
Sound like a lot? Do it a couple of times and you'll be surprised how easy it is.

Then pull down as many YouTube videos as you want and show your students, colleagues, family, geo-caching club, guitar teacher, etc.

Realistically, this feature should not inspire ooh, aahs and sharp intakes of breath. After all, it's a function that seems so natural. But if you've been searching for a way to do this - and know just how impossible this has been for an iPad that hasn't been jailbroken - you just might gasp, ever so slightly, the first time you see it happen.

Happy downloading.